Definition:
The bounce rate measures the degree of rejection that exists on a page. It represents the percentage of visitors who enter a website and leave it instead of continuing to view other pages within the same site. It is a measure of the effectiveness of a website.
This rate is expressed in so many percent. For example, if a CPC (cost per click) campaign produces 100 visits to a particular landing page, of which 75 went to another page on the same site later while 25 did not, the bounce rate was 25%. Bounce rate is a very common example of KPIs to measure the performance of websites, advertising campaigns and landing pages.
Bounce rate is one of the simplest and most important metrics to look at in Google Analytics. Because of the way Analytics measures “time on page,” any bounce is recorded as a visit that lasts only 1 second, even when technically a visit can stay on a web page for 20 minutes before rebounding.
How to reduce bounce rate
The abandonment of a website often occurs because the visitor does not find what he is looking for, because the page takes time to load or simply because it does not present attractive content. The first thing to do to solve the problem is to find out why the bounce rate occurs and improve our weak points to reduce it.
- One of the keys is to take maximum care of the user experience (UX),which includes factors such as usability, loading speed, etc. In this sense, it is very important to implement a responsive design and adapt the contents for any type of device.
- Including relevant, quality and search-related content is another factor that allows you to reduce the bounce rate.
- Images and videos are becoming increasingly important. You have to take care of the audiovisual content and include it whenever possible.
Bounce rate and dwell time
Although we have already seen that the bounce rate is one of the most important measures in digital marketing, it is advisable not to assess it in isolation. For example, for a digital newspaper, a blog or a certain website it may not be so negative that the user has not gone from the first page if, on the contrary, he has remained on it for a considerable time. It is considered that the average time of permanence of a user is 40 seconds, so the objective of a webmaster should be to try to hook him for a longer period of time. That would be an indication that the content of your site is relevant.